


A Soldier's Wife

by Sole_Sakuma



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sole_Sakuma/pseuds/Sole_Sakuma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her first memory is her mother. After that comes a childhood of running down the beach and she feels the hot sand between her fingers...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Soldier's Wife

**Author's Note:**

> It's fic about Finale's Birthday Guy's wife.

Her first memory is her mother. She's barely a shadow, a blurry voice, but she faintly smells of jasmine and that gives her away -she never figured out how her mother managed to smell so prettily-. She's reminding her she mustn't cry, because soldier's daughters don't cry. She feels the heat of the scorching sun and the sound of the distant sea. She hears the screaming of the sailors and something inside her breaks.  
Her older sister holds her hand tighter and she bites her lip. When says goodbye to her father, in her lips there's something that pretends to be a smile.

After that a childhood of running down the beach comes and she feels the hot sand between her fingers. She hears the scolding of the town's people and the pride resonating in their voices. The scraps of a conversation run through her head. For the glory of the Fire Nation. It has to be done. Everybody must make sacrifices. It will be tough. But we are strong.  
They sounded convinced, but now she wonders. Maybe at night, when their youngest had a fever or when bandits came back or when they were shorthanded for harvest, they missed the mother, the brother, the son.

She remembers her grandmother's tired voice and the tales of a better past, an always better past. She always wanted to tell her friends, but they'd always rather play dragon hunter.  
Now it's her turn. Her grandmother's rugged hands haven't sewed in a long time. She tries to make her stories happy but she knows her hopelessness is contagious.

Her father didn't come back. When she knew, it was like the ground fell apart. With time, she stopped crying at night.

Then he came. Every time she stumbles upon something of his -anything, a forgotten shoe, that weird instrument he used to insist he knew how to play-, her mind goes back to the town's streets. To the gossiping with friends. To the first time their hands touched. To his frank and frankly a little stupid smiles. And to that first festival and the giggles while they hid in some dark corner and that wet kiss, that kiss that was actually so bad and so full of teeth.  
She thinks about whether her oldest daughter, the one that followed her father and grandfather's path, is that soldier -that soldier that left- for someone else and she prefers to think she's not.

They married hurriedly and since then, her life has been hurry. She's always out of time, but her life is stalled. Sometimes she wants to follow her husband, travel the world, but she knows war is not an adventure. She may have never seen a battle but she's living one.

When everybody else starts to be in hurry and when everybody stalls, the part of herself that has wanted a flying bison since she was little becomes all she has left. For the first time she tells herself that it might have been better if there had never been a war. And then one day she tells the town, she tells nobody in particular. She knows and they can't deny that they're all tired. That maybe it's different in the capital, but in the end, all that matters is that they come back home.

When Sozin's Comet comes back on her husband's birthday, she fancies it's a painful coincidence but it makes her laugh. Her laughter is bitter, the only kind of laughter she has left and the only one she has used for years. Then what happens happens and there's peace. Then everybody looks at her in admiration and they say they've always thought she was right and at first she despises them in secret and then openly. But her husband has not come back and her children ask questions, then she finds her strength on those old stories and she promises them they'll have a flying bison and they don't get it.

He comes back in fall, she thinks, and at first she doesn't even believe it. Until he smiles and despite everything, it's the same smile.  
He's tired and skinny and old and he'll never quite come back and he'll never tell her everything, but that doesn't matter. Because now he's playing that awful instrument and it's even bothering her again.


End file.
